I thinking yesterday about the death of old habits.
As I left my house yesterday, I remembered that I had lunch plans about 9 city blocks away from my office. So I hopped on my bike, and start riding to the Patco station in order to take the train across the bridge and into the the city. It's a four mile ride - takes about 15 minutes. For those 15 minutes, I kept telling myself, "don't put the bike on the bike rack, take it on the train so you don't have to walk to lunch, don't put the bike on the bike rack, take it on the train so you don't have to walk to lunch..."
Obviously, the habit is to zip right up the the bike rack, lock the bike up, enter the station, walk through the turnstile, get on the train, and go to work.
And I was doing well in my effort to remember to do something different right up until the time that I approached the train station.
Now usually, I move to the far left, cross a fairly busy road against traffic, bank left and use the sidewalk to get to the bike rack. That's the habit - it's not difficult. The plan was to do the same thing except to skip the bike rack and board the train with the bike. My lovely mantra was doing it's job of reminding me.
But...as I began to move to the far left, a car decided to ignore the traffic light, preventing me from doing so. This caused me to have to stay to the right and bike with traffic across the busy road. This caused me to miss my left-hand bank toward the sidewalk and I had to bike an additional block before I could cross to the side of the road I needed to be on.
Now I'm facing the train station from a totally different perspective than the habit. And what do I do? Flustered by the extra effort required to reach my goal, I regain composure and the habit kicks back in. I head to the sidewalk, bank to the right this time, and zip up to the bike rack, lock my bike, enter the station, walk through the turnstile, and remember, "don't put the bike on the bike rack, take it on the train so you don't have to walk to lunch."
Too late. I already paid to go through the turnstile and wasn't about to pay to get out and then pay to get back in again. So I walked to and from my lunch - the price I paid for my habit.
All that to say that I'm really amazed at how hard habits are to break. Even when we have the best of intentions and have set ourselves up for success...there's always something lurking to throw us off track and land us back where we don't want to be.
Someone once told me that "a rut is a grave with both ends open." It takes a lot of effort to climb six feet up. But if you have a habit that you're trying to break...keep climbing...especially if there's a price to pay that's higher than walking 9 blocks.
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